Families Around the World

7 Key excerpts on "Families Around the World"

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  Families in a Global Context

  • Charles B. Hennon, Stephan M. Wilson, Charles B. Hennon, Stephan M. Wilson(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  There are many different ways for families to meet their basic needs as well as to enjoy a certain quality of life. This book does not argue that there are universal or standard ways to solve family problems. With globalization, Westernization, and the movement toward a “global village,” there is some convergence of family life patterns (e.g., marrying for love or more egalitarian gender roles). However, there are still important differences across and within societies, sometimes remarkably so. While there are important lessons to be learned about how different families nurture their members, select their mates, manage their stress, and otherwise function, the contributors represented here do not attempt to suggest the one best answer. Rather, the emphasis is on the diversity of lifestyles and family forms found throughout the world.

  While there is a discourse about how lessons learned and/or solutions to family dilemmas in one country can be used in other countries, context must be considered (Hennon, Jones, Roth, & Popescu, 1998 ). Differences in family traditions, religions, cultural values and norms, and typical worldviews about what is right and normal, must be considered for thorough understanding. While indicating how different people often facing relatively similar circumstances attempt different solutions, this book does not suggest that there is a “one size fits all” approach to describing or supporting families.

  Another important element to notice is that one cannot necessarily impose policy ideas, concepts, models, or other ideas from one country/ culture to another. Several contributors make this point. The concept of family is different in China or India than in the West. The concept of nuclear family in Mexico differs in important ways from other Western nations. Typical models of the life cycle or families being coresident units do not fit the reality of South Africa. Issues of gender differ widely across the globe, for example, in Iran and Turkey compared with Romania or Brazil. Concepts like stress are not commonly used in India and family stress is relatively unstudied in Italy. Theoretical models of family change used in other societies do not fit the actualities of Italy.

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  Families in Asia

  Home and Kin

  • Stella Quah(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  family as a social group that is substantially different from other groups such as co-workers or close friends. In their view, four characteristics distinguish the family from other social groups. First, ‘families last for a considerably longer period of time than do most other social groups’. Second, ‘families are intergenerational’. Third, ‘families contain both biological and affinal (e.g. legal, common law) relationships between members’. And fourth, these relationships link families ‘to a larger kinship organization’ (Klein and White, 1996:20–23). In sum, these four features make the family a unique social group.

  In addition to being unique, the social group known as family displays a wide variation in form, structure and internal dynamics across time and space. In Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, analysts and policy makers have recognized for some time now, the existence of a multiplicity of family forms (Rapoport and Rapoport 1982; Sussman and Steinmetz, 1987; Moen, 1989; Kamerman and Kahn, 1989; Edgar, 1990; Koopman-Boyden, 1990). To appreciate this variation we need to distinguish between ideal family and actual family forms. This conceptual distinction introduced by M. J. Levy (1949, 1965) based on his study of the family in China, is highly relevant to Asian countries in general. I discuss this distinction further in Chapter 3 but the notions of ideal and actual families are relevant at this point.

  Over the decades, Asian communities have continuously followed and transmitted to their children their image of the ideal family as dictated by their respective cultural traditions. For example, studies of families in China (Cheung and Liu, 1997; Yi, 2002), Japan (Sasaki and Wilson, 1997), Korea (Inoue, 1998), Malaysia (Ngin and DeVanzo, 1999), Philippines (Medina, 1991), Singapore (Quah, 1998), Taiwan, (Lu, 2000), Thailand (Schvaneveldt et al. , 2001) and Vietnam (Thi 1999; Knodel et al. , 2000), indicate that, notwithstanding the cultural differences across Asian countries, they are all inclined to regard as their ideal

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  Human Behavior Theory

  A Diversity Framework

  • Roberta Greene(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The family therapy field is highly abstract and insufficiently self critical (Weiner & Boss, 1985). Failure to be self-critical, according to Bernai and Ysern (1986), has led to the implicit acceptance of several social and pol iti-cal assumptions about the nature of U.S. society, including the structures of injustice and the way such exploitation harms families and the “normative endorsement of the nuclear family and its traditional sex roles” (p. 131). In this vein, the following section outlines key systems concepts and discusses how these concepts have been applied to address diverse family forms.

  Culture and the Family

  Ethnicity and family life are two concepts which . . . go hand in hand. They are so entwined that it is very difficult indeed to observe the one or even to reflect it seriously without coming to grips with the other.

  (Billingsley, 1976, p. 13)

  For social workers to provide culturally sensitive assessment and treatment for families with ethnic and cultural backgrounds different from their own, it is necessary to understand the cultural aspects of family systems (Tseng & Hsu, 1991). As family members interact with each other and the environment, they develop a set of shared meanings that serve as a social foundation for their culture (Chess & Norlin, 1988). Culture refers to a group’s way of life: those elements of a people’s history, tradition, values, and social organization that become implicitly or explicitly meaningful to the participants (Green, 1982).

  The family is often viewed as the basic sociocultural institution through which culture is transmitted. Culture is said to shape the cycle of growth of family systems members as well as the group’s culture. Within the contexts of its members, the family maintains itself throughout its life by adhering to its own values and beliefs (Kluckhorn, 1951). Culture, then, is “the symbolic image of [a family’s] purpose that its members carry around in their heads” (Polsky, 1969, p. 12).

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  Families, Intimacy and Globalization

  Floating Ties

  • Raelene Wilding(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Thus, a busy working mother on a low income might be 120 FAMILIES, INTIMACY AND GLOBALIZATION expected to provide less support than a woman with adult children, part-time work and a substantial income. This points to the growing awareness that definitions of the family – and of the extended family – are somewhat fluid and changeable. Members of a family network will engage in rituals and routines, in ‘family practices’ (Morgan 1996 , 2011) and ‘family displays’ (Finch 2007 ), that help to consti-tute a particular family’s membership and identity. Most serve to maintain the family, for example, through annual events at which members are reu-nited. Some are designed to encompass new members, such as a new baby, an adopted child, a marriage partner, domestic servant or family friend who becomes ‘like family’ through the support they provide or receive. Others serve to separate from the family individuals who were once considered core members, such as a divorced partner, a deceased aunt, or a family-like domes-tic servant who has left the family’s employ. As David Morgan ( 2011 ) points out, the family is something that we ‘do’, rather than just something that we ‘have’ (see In Focus 7.1 ). At the same time, we need to recognize that families are not simply created out of our own reflexive activities or desires. As Michael Gilding ( 2010 ) points out, families are also social structures and framed by normative conventions, some of which are enshrined in national law. This is made clear by inherit-ance laws and practices, which continue to prioritize the claims of some members of the family over others. It is important to recognize that these institutional features of the family ensure that some ideas and ideals of fam-ily connections and relatedness will be more readily accepted, validated and supported by larger social structures and practices.

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  Empowerment Series: Social Work with Groups

  Comprehensive Practice and Self-Care

  • Charles Zastrow, Sarah Hessenauer(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  266 LEARNING OBJECTIVES A family is one category out of a number of categories of small groups. This chapter will help prepare students to: LO 1 Describe the diversity of family forms LO 2 Describe the societal functions of families LO 3 Understand how to use two family assessment techniques LO 4 Comprehend aspects of families for workers to focus on LO 5 Describe family problems and the social work services available to families Social Work with Families 9 T he focus of social work services is often the family, an interacting, interdependent system. The problems faced by people are usually influenced by the dynamics within the family, and dynamics within the family are, in turn, influenced by the wider social and cultural environment. Because a family is an interacting system, change in any member will affect all others. Tensions between a husband and wife, for example, will be felt by their children, who may then respond with disturbed behavior. Treating the children’s behavior alone will not get to the root of the family problem. 1 Another reason for the focus on the family rather than the individual is that other family members are often needed in the treatment process. They can help identify family patterns. In addition, the whole family, once members perceive the relationships among their various behaviors, can form a powerful team in reestablishing healthier patterns. For example, family members can pressure their alcoholic mother to acknowledge her problem. They may provide important emotional support for her efforts to stop drinking. They may also need counseling themselves (or support from a self-help group) to assist in coping with them when she is drinking. LO 1 Describe the Diversity of Family Forms DIVERSITY OF FAMILY FORMS The family is a social institution that is found in every culture. The U.S. Census defines family as a group of two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption.

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  The Role of Gender in Practice Knowledge

  Claiming Half the Human Experience

  • Josefina Figueira McDonough, F. Ellen Netting, Ann Nichols Casebolt, Josefina Figueira McDonough, F. Ellen Netting, Ann Nichols Casebolt(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Unit One: Defining Family: Contested Terrain. A review of diverse understandings of family, and an introduction to concept of social construction.

  Selected Readings from: Thorne & Yalom (1982). Rethinking the family; Fine (1993). Current approaches to understanding family diversity; Gross (1992). Are families deteriorating or changing?; Flax (1982). The family in contemporary thought; Stacey (1990). Brave new families.

  Unit Two: Theorizing Family. A review and critique of dominant family theories in historical context.

  Selected Readings from: Burr et al. (1979). Contemporary theories about the family; Ingoldsby and Smith (1995). Families in multicultural perspective; Carter and McGoldrick (1989). The changing family life cycle; Cheal (1991). Family and the state of theory; Coates (1992). Ideology and education for social work practice; Ferree (1990). Beyond separate spheres.

  Unit Three: The Social Construction of Family: Cultural, Historical, and Political Perspectives.

  Selected Readings from: Gittens (1985). The family in question; Mintz and Kellogg (1988). Domestic revolutions; Jones (1984). Labor of love, labor of sorrow; Baber and Allen (1992). Women and families; Baca Zinn (1990). Family, feminism, and race in America; Collier and Yanagisako (1987). Gender and kinship; Jennings and Waller (1990). Constructions of social hierarchy; Weedon (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory.

  Unit Four: Extending Family: Learning from Diverse Constructions of Family and Challenging "-isms."

  Selected Readings from: Carter (1988). Remarried families; Depoy and Noble (1992). The structure of lesbian relationships in response to oppression; Weston (1991). Families we choose;

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  The Contemporary Indian Family

  Transitions and Diversity

  • B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva, Mahima Nayar(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  Another common explanation is the association of the East with familism and the West with individualism. These differences are rooted in the religious teachings which dominated these regions. Thus, it was observed (Glick, 1979 and Dumont, 1981 cited in Goody, 1983, p. 23) that whereas Christianity gave birth to modern individualism, the collective notions of kinship and the family and the emphasis on intergroup relations are the result of religious faiths such as Islam in the Middle Eastern regions. Likewise, collectivism displayed in the Southeast Asian countries, a major attribute of familism, can be seen as the articulation of Eastern religious traditions such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Hinduism, to mention a few. These diverse cognitive orientations or worldviews are the result of the internalisation of the cultural scripts embedded in literature, education, and other values which affect people’s ways of viewing the world.

  I shall take this argument a step further by shifting my discussion to the implications of these distinguishing features to family and kinship relations in different regions of the world and how the basic distinction between collectivist/familism and individualist/individualism orientations impacts the extended or nuclear family forms and forms of marriage. I shall present here the results of a study – World Family Map Project, 2013 (Child Trends, 2013) – which was based on a study sample of 45 countries. The sample was selected from 200 countries in the world, representing a majority of the world’s population, with a regional representation of high-, middle-, and low-income countries. The findings are shown in Figure 2.1 .

  Figure 2.1

  World family patterns and marriage trends

  Source: Summary of the report of Child Trends. (2013). World family map 2013: Mapping family change and child wellbeing outcomes. Bethesda, MD: Author. Retrieved from worldfamilymap.org/2013/ . Notes: AS = Asia; ME = Middle East; SA = South Africa; SSA = sub-Saharan Africa; EU = Europe;

  OC = Oceania; AMC = Americas (N = North; S = South); C/S = Central and South America. ✓ = more likely ↑ = higher likelihood X = less likely

  As indicated in Figure 2.1

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